Tracking Sales and Submissions using Collection Sets in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Tracking sales and editorial submissions are part of the business of professional photography. As a working artist, I need to keep accurate records about where my images have been published. Tracking the images that were submitted to a client, but not selected for publication, is also important. Tracking the reject images, and the successes, is a great way to learn more about what other’s see in your photography. If you are clever, this can keep you from sending the same rejected photographs to the same editor again and again.
Tracking sales and submissions requires a “private” note taking method. Keywords, and other metadata fields, are not the ideal tools for this sort of activity because these fields are “public.” An image’s metadata is readable by anyone who has access to the file unless this data has been intentionally removed. My keywords, and other descriptive metadata entries, are important information that I do not want to strip out. I need the metadata so that I can find my files in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and so that my client’s can understand my photograph’s content and context.
Typing words like “previously published in X magazine for $1″ into my file’s metadata is a bad idea! I need to keep track of the sale but I want to keep these details private. They need to be private information since I often submit, and hopefully sell, the same image to multiple clients. If my client knows that the image they want has been used before, or worse they know how much I was paid for that usage, what room do I have now to negotiate a better price?
I’m an honest man and I am proud of my reputation. My landscape and sports photography has appeared in more than twenty publications. If an editor ask about an image’s history then I will gladly tell them exactly where and when it was used. If the client doesn’t ask though why should I needlessly share this information? If they do ask then my precise record keeping helps me to answer the prospective client’s question honestly. Being able to tell an editor exactly where, and when, an image was used is a lot more professional then saying “oh, that photo has been published before but I can’t remember how many times or who used it.”
So, how to track sales and submissions without putting undesirable information into each file’s metadata? My solution to this problem is to use Collections and Collection Sets inside of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Collections and collections sets are an incredible organizational tool for the professional photographer and they are completely private!
Collections, and Collection Sets, are private data because they exist only within your Lightroom Catalog. Collections are marked in your .lrcat file only so they have no impact on your file’s metadata. This makes them the perfect tool for grouping images together to make a submission and for tracking the end results. In this video tutorial, I demonstrate the whole magazine submission process while answering a “photo call” from the Big Sky Journal magazine. Check it out….
Tracking Sales and Submissions using Collection Sets in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom from David Marx on Vimeo.
Related Tutorials
- Introduction to Collections in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
- Tracking Sales and Submissions Using Collection Sets in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
Filed Under: (04) Organizing Your Photography • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorials
About the Author: David Marx is a digital photography instructor whose engaging teaching style inspires photographers of all skill levels. David is an Adobe Certified Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom Expert. David has led Adobe Photoshop / Photoshop Lightroom seminars and digital photography field workshops for The Rocky Mountain School of Photography, FirstLight Workshops, The American Society of Media Photographers, and the world-renowned Blackberry Farm Resort. To learn more about David's software seminars and field photography workshops, please visit 
Thank You Thank You
Very nice presentations.
Good pace.
Well organized.
Good tone.
I was close to giving up on LR and your videos saved me.
Dear Mark,
Thanks. I appreciate the kind words. Don’t give up. This software is not that difficult and it really make can organizing and enhancing your digital images much easier!
–
David Marx
Wow. You are so clever. This is such a great idea to track photos for gallery submissions or anything. Thank you!
Ah, I think that I have figured out the problem. I had not fully grasped the difference between collection sets and collections.
It appears that you can’t do “Set as Target Collection” to a “collection set”, whereas you can for a “collection”. Actually it makes sense, as I think about it.
Dear Jane Yudelman,
You figured it out! The “Set as Target Collection” shortcut works with Collections. It does not work with Collection Sets. Your “Portfolio 2011″ is a Collection Set–that’s why it can contain the sub-group “Selected” and other collections.
–
David Marx
I have a follow-up question about creating collection sets. I think that I must be doing something wrong.
Using LR 2 I have successfully created a set that goes something like this: gallery name, “portfolio 2011″, images “selected” by gallery. That’s all fine.
But when I try to set “portfolio 2011″ as the target location for my images, there is no option for this in the pull down menu. The set at target option is only available at the lowest level which is “selected”.
Any thoughts on what I might be doing wrong?
Many thanks,
Jane
Firstly, thanks for your great contributions to the community.
Secondly, what about using keywords, but mark these private; as in untick in “Edit keyword tag” one or more boxes under “Keyword Tag Options”… meaning you can still use keywords for your submitted images, etc.
I have a top keyword called [Private Metadata]; under this ‘parent’ I have trees for all sorts of private data, such as family member names, work colleagues names, etc.
I also use [] for the keywords that will not (want to) export.
E.g.
[Private Metadata]
- [Max G... Jr Family]
– [Max G...]
– [Susan G...]
- [Work]
– [Locations]
– [Name of work loc 1]
– [Person name 1]
– [Person name 2]
– [Person name 3]
– [Name of work loc 2]
– [Name of work loc 3]
…
Cheers, Max
Dear Max,
Using private keywords is a great option but it takes more work to set them up. Creating a collection / collection set is easy. Building keyword hierarchies and controlling all of the options– make private, export containing words, export synonyms–can get tedious. Combining this feature with Smart Collections can harness the full potential of both systems.
–
David Marx
I agree that Collections perform exactly as you say, and I also started along this route, until I realised that there is NO way to back up a collection or collection set, except as a part of your catalogue.
This lack of portability and recreatability has made me move to setting up specific keyword codes in the shots, and tying them to meaningful Smart Collections, which *can* be exported and imported seperately. A bit more work, I know … I set up the collecions as before, to do the initial organising, but then change them to smart collections so that I can keep all of the organistional work seperate to the catalogue, and the backed-up smart collections can be transferred between systems.
Dear Gary Rowe,
You are a very clever man. You are absolutely right that collections are not as reliable as keywords. Keywords are more secure because they can be written into each and every file’s metadata. I like your suggestion very much but building hierarchical keywords sets and smart collections requires a lot more work. May I suggest reading this excellent article on keywords vs. collections and other Lightroom catalog organizational tips from Timothy Armes’ blog. I bet that you, and many of our other readers, will find it quite insightful.
It’s true too that the only way to protect your collections is to back up your catalog but I would argue that you need to back everything up anyway. I can build new collections if I have too but there are some precious photos on my hard drive that I could never re-shoot! Thanks for sharing your powerful technique and have a happy new year!
–
David Marx
That’s a great use for collections in Lightroom – thanks for the tip!